Morning Sky - Mountain Sunrise
Anguish is the emblem of our helpless love, felt fully in every cell of the body; felt fully until it overflows, in a cry, in tears in words that try to negate, powerlessly, what is occurring. Anguish is our foundational cry against the unjust taking away of what we feel should be forever ours. … Anguish is always waiting for us: beyond our refusing to care, or our unwillingness to feel fully how helpless we often are … . Anguish is not debilitation: anguish fully felt, is a sign that we are fully awake at last, through our own pain, to all the heartbreaking losses and goodbyes involved in the drama of human life… David Whyte, Anguish – an essay in Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
David Whyte’s writing, in particular his reframing of everyday words, often has a way of helping me understand challenging events that I’ve experienced, expanding my awareness and sometimes pivoting my point of view. What in the moment felt like grief I now recognize and appreciate as anguish.
In hindsight I can call the experience a dance with anguish that carried me deeper into myself and to what I most deeply care about: Life, All Life. Yeah, no surprise, I’ve said and you’ve read this before. Yet in the wake of this dance a clarity and a depth arose that hasn’t been present before in my desire to reconnect the awareness that my/our little lives are inseparable from the greater whole that IS Life. AND to make conscious choices in daily my/our little lives that serve that greater whole.
With this awareness we do so not to create new ways of exploitation and extraction that destroy Life. We aim that our creations are in service to Life, for when we serve All Life, we are in the highest service to self, to all our kin, to Mother Earth, and the cosmos. We choose in alignment with our belonging.
Yes, this is not a new topic here in The Pivot but it is where my heart, The Ink, and this week’s experience guide me.
I think most of us are feeling some level of anxiety about the time we are navigating, the uncertainty, the constant flow of fear-based news of war, discord, division, violence in many forms including unlawful arrests and murders. The reality of thousands of wildfires burning across Turtle Island impacting millions with smokey air and, in my own case, heightened preparedness for ‘what if…’ amidst the drought here. Along with devastating flooding in some areas and heightened earthquakes and volcanic eruptions around the globe.
Not to mention current planetary alignments and influences, many of which offer the opportunity to open up into understanding Life and service to Life in new ways. We are, after all, in the Age of Aquarius fully now. And the acceptance of uncertainty and transformation that will require can likewise bring forth anxious moments. We want certainty in a world that is not. We want the world to be different, but we prefer not to change.
But change we must. The story that triggered what first was anger and grief that I now understand as anguish wasn’t from any of these mainstream events although they certainly offered up the context. It was instead a story of yet another way we crafty humans seek control and convenience: approval for launching yet another technology into the sky, one that will mirror sunlight back to earth at night. It was a WTF moment, feeling a dagger pierce my heart. I, who love the dark AND appreciate its role, its necessity for Life and Life’s rhythms, felt that I and Life are about to be robbed yet again of something precious, something necessary for Life to continue. Because in the ways of separation we have lost our capacity to act in harmony and service to Life.
Several planetary alignments helped me to allow my deep feelings to have their expression – an almost full day of tears, sobs, pleas to guide us back into harmony with one another and with Life. A humble request to guide me in expanding my capacity to think and choose differently about where and how to direct my energy in each of its forms. This dance with anguish brought to a deeper sense that THIS is my question and the quest is my north star. Do I have the courage to follow wherever it leads? Do we have the courage to tap into anguish as a guide? Those are the questions!
A Path of Enlightenment